Wednesday, February 27, 2008

So, I was fighting my number one least favorite boss in Karazhan last night on my hunter, and it got me thinking. . . I really dont want to write a blog article tomorrow. Uh, er, I mean how many bosses in WoW do I truly hate? As it turns out, there are quite a number of them, but most are from vanilla WoW (and are on the list due to the same mechanic, see #3 below). And so, I bring to you what are, in my opinion, the five (or so) worst boss encounters I've had the "pleasure" of fighting in WoW.

#5: Hydross the UnstableI actually kind of enjoyed this boss fight, at least once everybody in guild got the hang of it. My issue isn't with the actual mechanics and coreography of the fight, but with the gearing required to fight it. I remember, back when TBC was in beta, reading from one blue poster or another that WoW was going to veer away from the resist fight model, because collecting resist gear wasn't fun. And, for the MOST part, they came through. . . unless you're a tank.

Tanks, the people who already carry 2-3 sets of gear with them at all times (DPS gear, and healing gear for non-warriors), are forced to collect resistance sets still, and unlike Molten Core in days gone by, that gear is used for maybe 1-2 fights, making it even MORE annoying to collect. Sure, you dont need to outfit the whole raid these days, but why is it always the tanks that have to collect the extra set (Even when its a warlock on Leo, or a mage on Maulgar, its a tank, but at least its another class).

But even THAT isn't my beef with this fight. Fine, make me collect resist gear. . . but MAKE THE RESIST GEAR AVAILABLE! Druid resist tanking gear has three unifying attributes: Its green, purchased from the auction house, and has "of XXXXXX protection" as part of its name. Warriors and paladins get all sorts of crafted epic resist gear they can collect to make a set. Druids can wear the rings and neck pieces of . . . oh, wait, no we can't, because we NEED our rings and neck piece to maintain uncrittability, and crafted items like The Frozen Eye have zero defense on them. The only saving grace of this fight is that, as an offtank dealing with adds, you don't actually need the resist gear at all if you regular tanking gear is halfway decent (shhh, don't tell my raid leader *cough*)

#4: Prince MalchezaarYou face not Malchezaar alone, but the Random Number Generator he commands! I bet you all thought this was going to be the #1 spot, didn't you? Well, he's not. The fact of the matter is, this is NOT supposed to be a "stand in one spot and DPS" fight, its supposed to be a mobility fight. But alas, folks have found that its easier to park your tank against a wall, your ranged folks in a safe nook, and take your chances with the RNG instead. And a boss fight whose success or failure is based more on the roll of a die than on the skill of the raiders is bad design (which should be corrected by shoring up those "safe spots" IMO, making the fight harder, but I think more fun once people got used to it).

For many people, Malchezaar is right up there on the list of most hated mobs, because he seems to always drop those two infernals that totally mess up the magical "Stand and deliver" positioning. But I've had some excellent experiences where exactly that happened, but I had a crack team with me, and we moved to a new position, and kept moving throughout the fight (IE: We were forced to do the fight the right way). It helps that I have feral charge to reset my position after shadow novas, I'll admit, but hey, I dont mind having an occasional raid fight that doesn't heavily favor warrior tanks *snerk*.

#3: LucifronLucy is just one of many in a long line of "decurse spam" fights that I find absolutely retarded. A boss that casts a nasty debuff is perfectly fine. . . a boss that casts that nasty debuff on all 40 members of a raid, every 20 seconds, is just annoying. These fights might have been enjoyable for those who didn't have any sort of cleansing ability, but for the rest of us, it was an annoying, repetitive chore.

#2: ShazzrahShazz was another one of those spam decurse fights, but with an extra delight that puts him head and shoulders above the rest. You see, he liked spamming this massive arcane explosion that would absolutely obliterate anyone other than the tank trying to be in melee range of him. So everybody, including the rogues and all the warriors but the main tank, would set up for the fight by making a big semicircle around a parked imp at max range. And the only reason anyone ever went inside that circle was because they were the tank, or they were bringing Shaz back to the tank after he randomly teleported to them.

For those of you who think fights like Maulgar and Prince are melee unfriendly, try spending an entire fight as a warrior/rogue shooting arrows, bullets, and throwing daggers at a boss. Alas, it could be worse. . . you could be decursing!

#1: Big Bad WolfYeah, go ahead and laugh. I HATE BBW (No, not THOSE BBW *cough*). Hate him with a passion. Supposedly, you're supposed to be able to keep ahead of him when turned into Little Red Riding Hood by running around the stage scenery in a tight circle, as he's supposed to get hung up on the stuff. I've watched people do it successfully. I've done the same exact damn thing they did. I've died every time I don the hood.

Whats really annoying, though, is that he seems to have this annoying tendency to make the tank big bad the moment he's pulled. And since the tank has no armor, he can't just stand there and build threat, he has to run away too, making sure that, at the very least, the healers are above his threat and will get beaten to a pulp the minute he breaks out. Or he picks on all of the healers, systematically splattering them all (I think I've seen a healer survive it once, but most of the time they seem to be too focused on health bars to notice the raid warnings and such).

When I first went to Karazhan, I was told we were lucky, because our first couple of Opera events were the Wolf, and he was the "easiest" of the opera events. Frankly, I'll take a harder event that kills me because I made mistakes over an "easy" event that splatters me just because I cant get a mob to bug out on scenery.

5: Chromaggus (BWL). My guild always seemed to get Time Stop, and a prot warrior who never got put on bosses I never got the sand needed to break it (always giving it up to those damn healers). This fight was just plain annoying with all the LoS and completely random shit to keep track of, especially if you (like us) were always cursed with Time Stop.4: Shade of Aran (KZ). I actually like this fight now because it's chaotic, fun, and my group can kill him before he sheeps, but while we were still learning it it was pure hell.3: General Rajaxx (AQ20). OK, it was a fun fight, but it was such a pain in the ass trying to keep noobs from standing on the debris and triggering that bug. What bug? Oh yeah, the one that caused all the remaining up to 8 waves to aggro at the same time! Gotta love being hit with 40 Elites that buff each other at the same time.2: Princess Huhuran (AQ40). Extremely disliked this one for the same reason you dislike Hydross- resistance gear. Sure in MC you had to get everybody decked out in FR, especially the tanks, but you had to have it for the last half of the instance, and a lot of stuff in BWL besides. Point being you put a lot of time into farming it, but you used it a lot too, which made it worth it. Huhu, though? All your melee DPS had to be MAXED on NR gear in order to fight this bitch, and you needed it for literally nothing else. NOTHING. That NR gear didn't do you a damn bit of good for anything else except this one cock-block of a fight. Not to mention that after her shell cracks, your best bet is to throw up a prayer and close your eyes, because no amount of skill is getting you through that shit- its pure luck as much as anything.1: Battleguard Satura (AQ40). Hate hate HATED this fight! I can't think of a single fight in the game that will wipe 40 people as fast as Satura does if one of the adds gets loose- and they ALWAYS seemed to get loose.

1. Hydross is a fight that a druid has no real business main tanking. Tank the adds w/o resist gear, and enjoy switching from tank to dps every minute, and reveling in the true flexibility of a druid.

2. How is Jan'alai not on this list? That sonuvabitch is the most annoying raid boss I've ever tangled with.... the random factor is high in the fight as well (when will he teleport?!?? will the eggs screw me?)

3. BBW - l2run, noob! =P Sorry - had to be said. You need two tanks on this fight for the reason you mentioned.... if one tank is sent running at the start, the other needs to take over.

Bring a paladin off-tank and Jan'alai becomes the easiest boss in ZA, assuming your raid can see the big honkin' fire bombs and stay away from them. I don't have a ton of pre-BC experience but here's my post-BC list, in no particular order:

5. Lady VashjWhile I appreciate that this fight is intended to be hectic, requiring multiple classes playing multiple roles at the same time, I really think the random spawn points of the Naga and Striders just add a stupid amount of unpredictability to the fight. One bad strider spawn and you end up with a dead healer (and sometimes dead DPS as well), basically screwing a raid's ability to complete phase 3 unless they're overgeared for the fight. The worst part is, there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about it! Fix this element of the fight and it goes from being one of the most annoying fights in the game to one of the most fun and challenging fights in the game.

4. NightbaneI don't dislike this fight because he's hard (it's not). I dislike it because it's 4 repeats of the EXACT same two-phases. This fight could be half as long (ground phase, air phase, ground phase, dead) and the outcome would be the same. I feel like after you get through both phases the first time, you're really just on autopilot for the next 5 minutes or so repeating what you just did. Boooooring. Sometimes I even intentionally stay in flame patches for extended periods of time just to freak out my healers and add some spice to the fight.

3. Archimonde...basically for the same reasons as Vashj. He's incredibly unpredictable and the slightest bit of lag on even one player's part during an air burst means a dead raid. I trust my guildmates' skills and abilities. I don't, however, trust their ISPs' relative levels of stability.

2. Big Bad WolfYeah, the LRRH part of the fight is a pain, and the kiting mechanics of it seem skewed in the wolf's favor, but I just hate the fight because they only gave him one emote for when the phase starts. Hearing "run away little girl, run away!" was amusing the first 5 or 6 times I heard it, but after downing him week after week and hearing that damn emote I'm ready to cut that hairy bastard's vocal chords out./mute

1. NetherspiteAgain, he's not hard, but I can't even count how many times I've been in a Kara raid that didn't even bother with this guy. If your group knows the fight and has done him before, he's cake. If you have one or two new people who don't understand how the beams work (especially if one's a tank), it's a wipe. His positioning so late in the instance and his relatively crappy loot table usually means that we're too tired to even bother giving him a try and risking a wipe unless we know we have solid beam people. :-/

Having never seen Jan'alai dead personally (though I've been close), the reason he didn't make the list is because we seemed to be getting good at predicting that fight as time went on, removing some of the random element. The rogue we had killing the hatchers on our attempts the last time I was there started to get a second sense of "He's going to teleport soon, I'm killing the hatcher early". . . and sure enough, the teleport would happen soon after. Also, it sounds like blizzard is remedying the issue of the teleport totally screwing you over, as long as you use ranged DPS to kill off the hatcher.

And Karthis, I knew you'd say that. But even the people in my Kara groups (rare as they are these days) who do get away most of the time (I dont know of anyone who never, ever dies to it) confirm that I'm doing it right, and just getting unlucky.

As for having no business main tanking Hydross. . . well, Druids have no place main tanking Nightbane either, but I do it, because a lot of times theres nobody else on the run who is able to. It would at least be nice to be able to have the gear to do it in occasions like this weekend, where one of our resist tanks is unable to attend due to real life commitments. Being the first choice, and being a viable choice, are two very different things.

...it is kind of BS to have an SSC clear be completely out of the question just because one of our resist tanks isn't online (that goes for Leo, too... try doing him without a FR tank and see where it takes you).

To remedy this situation, my past two guilds have had multiple tanks and locks with resist gear ready to go so that our farm nights don't take up half of or raiding schedule. I can personally say that this sucks, because I had to build an impromptu FR set with 70 badges and about 200 gold one night to fill in for our usual Leotheras tank... and that's the ONLY night I've had to tank him since. True, the guild refunded my gold expense, but I've had to spend about 2-3 weeks of kara/heroic farming to get my badges back, all so our guild wouldn't get held up on one night of progression.

Resist requirements for single tanks are lame, especially when I probably won't use that gear ever again unless we're doing vial runs.

I'm suprised you don't like the BBW Event - personally, I think it's one of the most fun boss fights in the game! It's just hilarious, especially if the entire raid is in TS and the LRRH-affected player goes "Help, help, I'm Red Riding Hood, help meeeee!". The first few attempts we wiped simply because we were all in fits and it's quite hard to concentrate when you got tears of laughter in your eyes! ;D

Granted, by the time my druid was ready to tank Kara, I'd already been in there with my mage (who ALWAYS died when LRRH-affected ;)), but in all the fights I've tanked the wolf, I've died only once, due to him stunning me somehow and then turning me into LRRH while I couldn't move... kinda sucked, but what the heck ;)

On the other hand, I despise the Romulo and Julianne event, it's just soooo boring.

Netherspite is also high up in my Bosses-I-hate-list. He isn't particularly hard, but due to his position and poor loot, we usually do him after the prince, at a time when about half the raid members are already griping about having to go to bed. After 5 minutes of deliberation who is going to take which beam, we move in. By the end of phase one, 2-4 DDs 'forgot' to step out of void zones or 'accidentally' walked into the red beam. >.< That's a lost fight, and after 3-4 rinse-and-repeats, we usually call it a day and the raid more or less dissolves in frustration, even though most other fights of the evening went rather well.